


Manny's Birthday

by Lexie



Category: Black Books
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexie/pseuds/Lexie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bernard and Fran make a discovery about Manny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manny's Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to swankyfunk for the betaread!
> 
> Written for Tish

"Manny!" croaked Bernard Black piteously, not bothering to lift his head from the desk. When no overgrown, hairy puppy of a man presented himself with hangover remedy and breakfast sausages, Bernard raised his voice to the level of a load groan. "Manny!"

The shop door opened and closed, and the sound of women's shoes clicking on the floor, approaching the desk, could be heard. The scent of a woman's perfume wafted.

" _Manny_ , you creeping pestilence," snarled Bernard into the desk. "Breakfast! Breakfast!"

"I'm not Manny, Bernard," said the disembodied voice of Fran Katzenjammer. "And do stop shouting." The chair in front of the desk creaked. "My head feels like somebody's been clapping it with a hammer all night."

"Thought you had a thing. Date-thing." Bernard's hand crawled across the desk. His fingers encountered several books, a roll of 5p coins, a glass (which was promptly knocked onto the floor), and something that could not be classified (it was damp and squishy, and Fran made a revolted noise when he touched it. Bernard sent it to live with the wineglass fragments, and it splatted when it hit the floor), until Fran slapped a pair of sunglasses into his open palm.

"I did," she said, as he attempted to sit up.

He scowled into the desktop and tried again, but his forehead was stuck fast, adhered to the desk by some unidentifiable substance. "It wasn't all _tea_ and _cookies_ , then?"

"Oh, it went well," said Fran's disgusted voice. "Well enough that I had to drink a whole bottle of red at the end of the night to blot it out of my memory."

Bernard placed his palms flat on the desk and pushed upward. He broke the seal of the sticky stuff and rapidly sat up, and just as rapidly slouched over the desk again, shoving on the oversized sunglasses. Fran sat in front of his desk, sunglasses on, an unlit cigarette in her mouth, and her hair standing on end as she rummaged through her purse.

"What'd you do?" he asked, elbow on the desk. His hand started out supporting his chin, but slowly migrated til it covered his entire face.

"I didn't ' _do_ ' anything," said Fran, digging through her purse more vigorously. "There just - wasn't any chemistry."

"He was gay, wasn' he?"

Fran favoured him with a cross look over the top of her sunglasses. "No, Bernard, my date was not a gay man." 

"Then what. _What_ ," said Bernard into his hand. "It was a gay lady."

Fran's hands stilled and she didn't look up, and then she all but buried her face in her bag in her sudden all-consuming interest in finding a lighter.

"Aha!" crowed Bernard. "She was! Took you ages to figure, to figure it out, didn't it?"

"Oh, shut up, Bernard," said Fran, pulling a sour face. "Why don't you check the messages to see where Manny's gone." She pointed at the phone with her cigarette, then sighed. "Have you got a light?" 

"No," said Bernard immediately, as he reached across the desk to stab the answering machine button. Sneeringly: "I light my cigarettes with all-consuming darkness and loathing."

"Bernard," Fran remonstrated, rolling her eyes, as the answering machine's robotic female voice stated, " _You have six new messages._ "

Bernard twitched, rolled his eyes right back at Fran (more viciously), scrabbled under a stack of papers and congealed bolognese, and came up with a blowtorch.

" _Hello, Mr. Black? This is Ronald Duemmling calling, from the bank? I wanted to inform you that--_ "

"Delete," said Bernard, and he punched the delete key with one hand and lit the blowtorch with the other. Fran leaned over the desk and burned away the tip of the cigarette hanging from her mouth, but sat back with what remained lit.

" _Bernard, this is your mother._ "

"Delete!" Bernard barked, doing just that.

" _S-somebody help me! Please! I've dialed a random number; I've been kidnapped, I don't know when he'll be b--_ "

"Damn kids!" The message was summarily deleted.

" _Manno!_ " Bernard and Fran exchanged a perturbed glance. " _It's been ages since I've heard from you, mate; I was just calling to wish you a--_ "

"Oh _Christ_ delete."

"Bernard," said Fran, shaking her head. "You shouldn't delete Manny's messages."

"He'll thank me," Bernard said curtly. "He called him Manno." 

" _You_ call him a perverted little monkey," she pointed out.

"Shhhh," he hissed, loudly.

" _Hi Manny! This is You-Know-Who. Num num num. Mwah!_ "

Bewildered, Bernard looked at Fran. "Is it English?"

The recorded chirpy female voice barreled on. " _I just wanted to make sure we were still on for tonight for your_ special day _! Call me, bye, bye, bye!_ " The phone clicked.

Bernard looked at it sourly. "What's so special about it?" he demanded. "Delete!"

"Bernard, would you _st_ \--"

"-- _On? Is it on?_ "

" _Yes, Mother, it's on._ "

Bernard's head rose swiftly. "Moo-Pa."

Fran's eyes met his. "Moo-Ma."

" _And a one and a two and a three!_ "

They both lunged for the phone at once. "Turn it off!" yelled Fran. 

"Delete!" Bernard bellowed. "Delete delete!" Unfortunately, all of that lunging (Bernard's involved his right leg up on the desk) got them into each other's ways, and as they fought to turn off the recording, the message blithely continued on.

" _Happy birthday to you!_ " sang the two voices together.

Bernard and Fran froze over the answering machine.

" _Happy birthday to you!_ "

"Is it - Manny's birthday?" 

"Manny doesn't _have_ birthdays. Plagues upon mankind aren't _born_ ; they _happen_!"

" _Happy birthday, Moo-Manny!_ " Bernard groaned and tried to slap off the message, but Fran smacked his hand away; he shot her a furious look and rummaged through his desk. " _Happy birthday to you!_ " Moo-Ma and Moo-Pa's voices sputtered and died, as Bernard dropped the pair of scissors and the two sections of cord.

Fran's eyebrows were furrowed. "Is it really...?"

"Ah, no," said Bernard, firing up the blowtorch again to light his own cigarette. He came close to singeing off his eyebrows, but didn't so much as twitch. "No." He switched off the blowtorch and dropped it into a desk drawer with a clunk, slamming the drawer with his foot. "It's a dastardly ploy for attention!" He blew twin indignant streams of smoke through his nostrils. "The last hue and cry of a desperate man!"

Fran's voice did that low thing it only did when she was really in trouble or really about to throw up. Or really - something else that Bernard wasn't allowed to remember. "I wasn't supposed to get him anything, was I?"

Bernard's emphatic " _No!_ " involved a wild flail of his arms. " _No_ , he does _n_ -" 

The shop door opened and Manny Bianco's voice preceded him. "So I said, so I said-" He struck a pose just inside the shop. "Well, _I'll_ be the judge of that."

Rowena laughed as she stepped through behind him. "Oh _Manny_ ," she said, gazing at him with adoring eyes.

Fran clapped a hand over Bernard's mouth. "Manny, Rowena," she said, slow and convivial, smiling. "Have a nice time?"

"Yes!" said Manny, beaming. "We went to the exhibition of Japanese lily art at the British Museum."

Bernard muttered something behind Fran's hand, and waved his cigarette threateningly. She let go. "You had a few messages, Manny," said Fran, arching an eyebrow and lowering her sunglasses so that she could peer at him over the top. "Is today _really_ your birthday?"

"Well--"

"Yes," said Rowena, smiling and taking Manny's arm. She brightly waved at Bernard with her free hand. "Hi Bernard."

"That'll be the day," Bernard snarled, pouring himself a glass of red.

Rowena shot a startled, wary look at Bernard; Manny started, not-so-subtly, attempting to usher her past.

"Do you have plans?" Fran asked.

"Well - yes," said Manny, forced to halt his Rowena-shepherding. "We were going to have a nice, quiet dinn--"

Fran clapped her hands together, brightening. "We'll have a party!"

Bernard and Manny said, "No!" in the same breath, though in entirely different tones of voice.

"Absolutely not!" Bernard bellowed onward. "I will not ha-"

"Oh, Fran, that's a _perfect_ idea," exclaimed Rowena.

Manny's head swiveled fast. "-It is?"

Rowena turned her smile on him. "We can invite friends, have some snacks, some drinks-"

"You could even have it here!" said Fran helpfully.

"No," snapped Bernard, waving his arms for attention. " _No!_ "

Fran laughed. "Come on, Bernard; it'll be fun."

"It will not be fun! It will be the very opposite of fun! It will be - it will be like having little tiny icepicks stuck into my eyes and _twisted around_!"

"It will be a laugh, I promise," Rowena assured him sweetly.

Seven hours later, Bernard Black sat in the dark at his desk, dripping a viscous green substance and wearing a child-sized conical party hat with the elastic under his chin. " `It'll be a laugh, Bernard,'" he said sourly to the goop-filled shop, and he took a swig from a bottle of wine. 

 


End file.
